University Daily Kansan / Friday, October 16, 1987
9
IN YOUR EYES
when it's time to go home, King knows the way through Fraser Hall's corridors.
At the end of the day, Charles Hallenbeck, professor of psychology, and King, his seeing-eye dog, take a moment to share a smile
Hallenbeck reads a book in Braille while King watches from his usual spot
As Hallenbeck lectures on the Psychology of Sleeping and Dreaming, King shows the students how it's done.
Randi Voth, Hallenbeck's reader last spring, helps him sign a credit card.
Photos By L.A. Rauch
Story By Brian Baresch
A world where sight is touch and sound - and a furry dog named King.
Charles Hallenbeck's dog, King, works hard for him, and Hallenbeck works to keep his dog happy. But he won't be bringing King to class much longer.
Hallenbeck, professor of psychology, was blinded at 15 when he and some friends found some explosives in a quarry and accidentally set them off. King, his Seeing Eye dog, has been showing him around for seven years. But the 9-year-old German shepherd is starting to suffer from an inherited arthritic condition and can't get around as much as Hallenbeck needs him to.
"King can't go up stairs or be active all day," he said. "The vets have advised me to use him sparingly."
Hallenbeck won't be able to get another dog until next summer, so he will be less mobile as King's arthritis gets worse. Hallenbeck eventually may have to rely on people to show him around.
to snow him around.
Hallenbeck said he was accustomed to using a cane until a hearing loss in one ear seven years ago made it difficult to tell where sounds came from. "I know how to use a cane, but the nature of my hearing loss makes it dangerous," he said.
King is very much like his first dog, Queenie, who showed him through high school and college. King has many of the same habits, mannerisms and personality traits. "I got to me thinking about reincarnation," he
He said that with a dog, "A blind person still has to listen to traffic, but not as much as a person with a cane.
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These similarities helped the two get comfortable with each other right away, and they became very close pals. "I'm sure he got to feel that he was working with an expert," Hallenbeck said.
To get a new Seeing Eye dog, Hallenbeck needs to spend a month getting to know a new guide dog at a training school, such as the Seeing Eye School in Morristown, N.J., where he met King.
Hallenbeek said he couldn't go this past summer because the school was booked solid, and because of eye surgery in July for an infection. Now, he can't drop his school duties.
Hallenbeck hopes his close companion will be his eyes until summer, but in winter King usually gains weight, which aggravates his arthritis. Hallenbeck hopes a diet will keep the dog's weight down.
Hallenbeck worked as a psychologist in a hospital for several years after getting his doctorate but eventually decided he'd rather teach, and he was right. "I really enjoy working with students," he said.
He relies on Braille textbooks, a talking computer and students who read aloud to help him teach Psychology of Sleep and Dreaming and a seminar in Computing and Psychology.
Psychology
The talking computer helps him with students' term papers, he said. Most students use computers anyway, handing in printouts of their papers. Hallenbeck asks for copies of their files on diskettes instead, which the computer then reads to him.
Computer then reads to him:
Readers, who read mail and parts of books aloud, help Hallenbeck keep up with paperwork. Good readers are hard to find, he said.
"Some people can't read," he said. "They have trouble translating what's on paper into spoken words, like someone's not 'illegible' for admission."
King, meanwhile, accompanies his master to class, sometimes even providing a sort of visual aid for the Sleep and Dreaming class as he falls asleep on the floor. "He's spent a lot of years sleeping under the teacher's table in the front of the room." Hallenbeck said.
Several students said it was kind of fun to have a dog in the class.
When he gets a new dog, Hallenbeck said, he will keep King as a pet and "consultant" to the new dog.
N.K. Rowling
"We have a house with enough room for him to spend his retirement," he said.